THE MAKING OF...
WORDS | John Murray Hill
Track: Valley of the Shadows
Artist: Origin Unknown [Andy C & Ant Miles] that went on and on, on this CD. I thought that if I could take a piece at the
Label: RAMM 004 bottom of the modulation and edit it, I could more or less get it into time,
which was around 160 BPM in those days. So, when Andy was doing the
Last issue’s Top 100 Tracks list provided some interesting interviews, beats, the bell line just fl oated all over it. We already had a vibe going – it
none more so than Ant Miles’ regarding ‘Valley of the Shadows’. So good it was washing around us. I did hear Andy talk about it on Radio 1 the other
was, that having to condense Ant’s choice insight into a measly 200-word day. We were just laughing! All the way through that tune we were laughing!
quote was an injustice. And so “The Making Of...” is born, and what better Everything fi tted like a jigsaw. It wrote itself, bizarrely. We had that bell line
way to kick off part one than with the epochal record nicknamed ‘Long across the whole keyboard; so obviously, an octave higher was still in time
Dark Tunnel’? but going twice as fast. A fi fth up from that was still slightly in time. Andy
was kind of fl icking the keys around on top, so if you listen to it, there is a live
You’ve all heard the spiel – ‘Valley of the Shadows’ is one of the records jamming element too.”
credited with inventing drum & bass. Part breakbeat, part jungle; the
original’s slow speed meant that it was versatile and could fi t into a whole “We only had one effect unit which was the Roland DEP-5. That always
range of DJ sets. “15 years ago now, isn’t it!” Ant Miles exclaims. used to give us a really nice, crisp reverb effect, which we applied to
everything we were doing at the time to give us some space. I felt, listening
Time flies. “It was made on Atari ST and Akai S1000,” Ant recalls. “The to the song, as if we were in a tunnel. At the time, I said to Andy, “I’ve got
whole song took up three floppy diskettes, so to give you some idea, the this vocal, but it’s a bit deep.” The track was going on a dark vibe so we
whole thing was 3 MB. It was kind of the leftovers that we hadn’t used decided to try it, to see how it fi tted.
from the A-side, called ‘The Touch’. The drums were a derivative of the
Hot Pants break, as you know. Something that we have always tried to do
since then is to use a new bit of technology when producing a track. We “Out of all the tunes we
decided to use the time stretch that was on the S1000 on the break. We
sat there and managed to get it down about six tones but at the same made, this was the most fun”
tempo, then layered it with the original.”
“When I fi rst got the Akai S900 in 1986 I was learning it and sampling the TV,
Ant Miles recalls these memories with all the speed of something he did experimenting, and one thing I sampled was a BBC1 program on near-death
last night. “It’s something that I’m not going to forget,” he explains. “It was experiences. I was watching the thing more than sampling, because I always
a milestone for us obviously, and even though 15 years old, it seems like found that stuff fascinating. On comes Barbara Lambert with a story of what
yesterday. It’s one of those I can never tire of because it’s still a lesson to us happened to her, saying, “I felt like I was in a long dark tunnel, with a very
of how to put a tune together, because it was so simple. Before that, we used bright light at the end, so brilliant, more brilliant than the sun”. Bosh!
to layer up break after break – a mish mash – but this just used one, with
another detuned.” “Bizarrely, out of all the different disks Andy and I had, we owned a huge
library from the off, somehow, the one we wanted fl ew out of the box. ‘There
Moving on... “The B-line was simply a sine wave. When you switch on the Akai it is – I can’t believe it!’ Five or six years later, we used it as the main sample
you get the sine, the pulse, whatever. We put a little envelope on it, of course. in ‘Valley of the Shadows’. The phrase fi tted the tempo perfectly – there
The early house stuff was similar – a pure sine. We spent AGES on ‘The Touch’, was a rhythmical connection with the tune. We didn’t have to do anything to
but it was remarkable how quickly it fell together compared to the other side.” make it sync. Again, we were rolling around laughing. Considering that we
had nosebleeds over ‘The Touch’, this was just bizarre. As Andy said, out of
“On the sample CD side, we always collected different ones, as everyone did all the tunes we made, this was the most fun.”
in the scene,” Ant gives us his insight. “The arpeggiator line was this thing
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K74-75_TheMakingOf-v1.indd 74 4/7/08 17:36:31
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